Hapsburg
by GoddessofSnark
Summary: County General gets a new patient, who insists on making the staff's life a living hell and trying to play matchmaker.
1. Default Chapter

Disclaimer: Don't own the staff of County General, those belong to WB and NBC. Don't sue. But don't use my plot or Selma without asking.  
  
A/N I don't pretend to speak Croatian, or even fluent Hungarian for that matter. What little bits I have here and there are as far as I know accurate, but if you notice a correction, please tell me. I know that.  
  
*****  
  
The radio beeped on, announcing the incoming trauma, reading the Cook County General staff. The ER staff mobilized quickly, waiting for the incoming plane crash. The ambulance pulled in and they had the gurney on it's way to the elegantly decorated puke-green trauma room. The paramedics spouted off the stats of the girl on the gurney, and left as quickly as they could, on their way to get to the next problem, the next person who was hurt.  
  
Luka Kovac and Robert Romano followed into the room, and Luka immediately took charge. "Miss? I'm doctor Kovac, can you tell me your name?"  
  
"Selma Hapsburg." Luka's and Romano's eyes shot up at the last name. "Stop gaping, the longer you wait, the more of a chance that you have of killing off the bloodline." With those words, Luka stepped up the treatment, ordering things quickly. Romano smirked a bit, realizing that his patient was just as sarcastic as he was.  
  
"Miss Hapsburg, what seems to be the problem?" Luka scanned the body over trying, before he started to lift up the white sheet covering her legs.  
  
"Let's see, I just crashed my plane into a tree and had it explode ten feet away from me, if that's not a good description, I don't know what is." The sheet came back and Luka drew his breath in deeply as he saw the wounds. What was left of her legs was a mangled, bloody mess. Her right leg and a huge open fracture, and both legs were badly burned. "Can you two be quick about this? I hate hospitals."  
  
"Well, we'll try our hardest to not have you here any longer than we have to." Luka was trying his hardest to be nice to the young brown haired girl that lay before him.  
  
"Yeah, well stop talking and start working there Smitty." Luka seemed somewhat offended at what she called him, and looked at Robert for escape, or at the very least help. Romano seemed amused at the disgusted glare that was on the younger doctors face. They set to work on her legs, Romano more ordering the other man around, as there was very little the senior surgeon could do with one good arm, other than wrap her unfractured leg in the aluminum foil that they used to cover burns.  
  
Kovac set her leg quickly, and gave her a high dose of morphine to serve the dual purpose of stopping her pain, and putting her into a drug induced haze to shut her up. He was glad to have the silence coming out of the thin mouth before him. She barely looked eighteen, and her long brown hair didn't aid in making her look older. Green eyes framed by the same thin mocha lashes, underneath perfectly arched eyebrows were now closed in a gentle rest.  
  
She was beautiful, both Luka and Robert had noticed that, as would anyone who saw her. She wasn't beautiful in a modern sense, she didn't have that cheerleader look about her, that was so common today, but she had a classic beauty, like that of Ingrid Bergman. Luka had to tear his eyes away from her, when he found her to be dragging away off his attention. Romano had left ten minutes ago, after they had brought her to her own room from the ER. Luka switched off the light in the room before closing the door behind them. 


	2. 2

She awoke sometime later in one of the recover rooms, slightly dazed from the drugs, but for the most part awake. She found one of her legs in a cast, and smiled, knowing that the idiots here could at least do something right, even if it was something as small as get a cast on correctly. She hated it already, finding it to itch like crazy, but it was better than going around with an open fracture. She tried to sit up, but found it to be hard, and painful.  
  
Her legs hurt from the burns, and she grimaced. It wasn't her fault that the Cessna she had been flying had hit a patch of turbulence. She kicked herself for wrecking the five thousand dollar plane. It was a piece of junk as far as planes went, but it was still an expensive piece of junk. She found the bald doctor, the one who hadn't been in charge of her, doing rounds of the ER patients that had been admitted, making sure that his staff had done their jobs.  
  
"Yo! Baldy!" He turned around and stared at her, obviously enraged.  
  
"What did you just call me?" he sounded somewhat incredulous, amazed and appalled that anyone would dare to call him that.  
  
"Baldy. Would you prefer midget?" His eyes met hers, and something, they were both unsure of what, passed between them. It was hatred, it was anger, but there were the seeds of friendship in there, there was mutual feelings, and similar personalities. They both hated each other, but from the few brief moments they had shared, they both looked to the other as a sparring partner, someone to trade insults with.  
  
"Well, well, well, I see our local royalty has awoken." He had recovered quickly, and injected his last phrase with all the sarcasm he could, turning the phrase into a rude jab. But all the girl on the bed did was smirk.  
  
"Bow down and kiss the gurney. You're on hallowed ground right now Demi Doc." The look on his face at that comment was priceless. He was shocked and obviously angered at the underhanded jab at him. "what? You're half the size of a normal man, and you appear to only have not even half the soul of one. If you're half a man, then you're half a doctor." He turned around to walk away before he did something he'd regret dearly, but she called after him again.  
  
"Doc!" He turned slowly, and glared at her. "Who are you?"  
  
"Someone who's leaving."  
  
"No, seriously, what's your name, I missed when Smitty there was busy wrecking my leg." He thought about it for a moment. It was a simple question, but he had to fight the urge to make something up off the top of his head. He couldn't even remember if he had even told the girl his name.  
  
"Romano. Now I have a question for you." It was something he had been pondering since she had come in on the ambulance.  
  
"Shoot."  
  
"Why do you call him Smitty?" She laughed out loud at his question, and kept going for a short while before composing herself again.  
  
"It's his name." Romano's eyebrows raised in slight confusing.  
  
"Kovac, it means blacksmith, or to make it shorter, Smith." Romano nodded. "Now another for you." Romano glared at her, but made no move to leave. "When do I get out of here? I've got a nice little cast on, can I go now?" Romano walked over to the foot of the bed and removed the chart from it's holder.  
  
"Not yet, you've got some bad burns and you're going to need some physical therapy."  
  
"Can't I get that back home?"  
  
"Where's home?"  
  
"New York." She had the look of someone who had been cooped up in someplace for way too long. She never could handle sitting still for very long, she was naturally antsy and impatient, always on the move, always running around like a chicken with it's head chopped off.  
  
"Probably not for a while." She looked disappointed, and somewhat scared at that. He looked at her for a long minute before he spoke again. "The Hapsburgs were German, weren't they?" She looked puzzled for a minute at the sudden shift of the topic before she spoke.  
  
"Originally, yes, but they ruled the entire Holy Roman Empire for a few centuries, half a millennium almost."  
  
"Which is why you know Croatian?"  
  
"Hungarian." She shrugged. "Close enough." He seemed somewhat impressed at her language skills.  
  
"You speak Hungarian?"  
  
"And French, and the new English, Spanish." If he wasn't impressed before, he was now. "Hey, don't look so shocked, I get bored easily, I lack an attention span."  
  
"So you taught yourself other languages?"  
  
"when it's all you have in your house, you make do with what you've got." She shrugged as if it was something common. He could speak French, but that was the extent of his literary capabilities. "Now, can you see exactly how long I'm going to be stuck here shorty?"  
  
"If you call me that, you'll get nowhere."  
  
"I don't care." He looked at her for another minute, before going off to find Luka, to dump his patient back onto him. 


	3. 3

"Hey, Kovac, your patient is looking for you!" Romano dumped the chart into the younger doctors hands before retreating back into the room he turned into his office, and into the endless sea of paperwork that he found dumped upon him.  
  
Kovac glared at the chart in front of him. he was so glad that she had been quiet for the little time she had been under the morphine, but now she was obviously up and talking, and from the look on Romano's face, obviously being just as snarky as ever. He walked towards the room that they had put her in, and looked at her. "Hey doc, tell me this right now, when the hell can I get out of here?" She was certainly blunt.  
  
"As soon as your burnt leg heals."  
  
"They're both burnt, dumbass." she pointed out. He glared at her, and she grinned sheepishly.  
  
"Well, as soon as we deem you good to go, at least two weeks, probably a month." The same panicked look invaded her eyes, but she hid it quickly.  
  
"Can't you just get rid of me, I have a doctor back home. Save you guys the money." He looked her over, debating the enticing offer. His training got the better of him, and he shook his head, his black hair falling in his eyes. He brushed the stray lock out of the way and glared at her.  
  
"Sorry, but I cant." She pouted at him, but leaned back into the bed.  
  
"I can't stand sitting still. How soon can I start therapy?" She asked him, shifting in the bed trying to find a comfortable position.  
  
"Another day or so. We just want to make sure that your burns aren't infected." She rolled her eyes, but understood the doctor's point of view.  
  
"The sooner the better."  
  
"Why the rush?"  
  
"I hate Chicago, and even worse, I hate hospitals, and I hate being forced in a bed, I like to be able to get up and walk around." To illustrate her point, she stood up and went to swing out of the bed, only to find that her legs didn't want to cooperate.  
  
"That's why you need physical therapy. You had some nerve damage, and you've shattered your pelvis." She groaned as the pain started to sink in, before she eased herself back down on the bed. "You want some more morphine?" she shook her head no. "Tylenol, or Advil, or something." He nodded, and walked outside to call a nurse to grab some for her. "Is that it?" he said, peeking his head back in. she nodded slightly, and he walked away, leaving the nurse with a small cup of water and two Advil for her.  
  
She took them gladly, before looking over at the IV. She could feel the itch starting, and she wanted more morphine, but she had the common sense to avoid it. She knew that she would have trouble with it so temptingly close, knowing that all she had to do is ask, but she had already worked so hard. She tossed and turned a bit, trying to erase the thought of it, the thought that was plaguing her, but was finding it increasingly difficult. 


	4. 4

A/N "Dedja" means grandfather in Hungarian. Enjoy!  
  
She saw him walking through the h, and shouted after him. "Yo! Baldy, Romano, whatever the hell your name is!" He walked in through the open door and looked at her.  
  
"Yes?"  
  
"Can you do me a favor?"  
  
"What?"  
  
"When's your break?" she asked him.  
  
"In ten minutes." He looked rather curious.  
  
"I'll give you the money, but could you run down to a wawa or something and get me one of those big bags of Doritos and a two liter of coke? I can't stand hospital food. Oh yea, and a bag of starbursts. I'll even give you extra if you do." She flashed her best disarming grin at him. she needed something to take her mind off the pain. he looked at her with a shocked, somewhat appalled look on his face. "what? All I did was ask you to run down the street for me, and I said I'd pay you."  
  
"What makes you think I'd do that?"  
  
"Because you respect me. You think that I'm cool cause I can speak 3 languages and make fun of the staff the same way you do. Besides I'm a spoiled brat, didn't you notice?"  
  
"I've noticed." She laughed at him, and how he attempted sarcasm.  
  
"Please?" she whined at him, before she reached down for her pants, only to realize that they weren't there. "Did you save my pants? I have my money in there." He gave a cursory glance around the room for any trace of her clothing.  
  
"Can't say that we did. How much did you have in there?"  
  
"Fifty and my credit card." He nodded, before he walked out the door.  
  
"You owe me, and you owe me big." She laughed at how the doctor showed some trace of humanity, before the next one, her real one walked in.  
  
"Hello there Smitty."  
  
"Do you have to call me that?"  
  
"It's fun." He rolled his eyes.  
  
"I liked you better when you were quiet and on morphine." She grinned at him, but had something of a haunted look in her eyes when he mentioned that.  
  
"Yes, but I'm not. So you have to put up with me."  
  
"What do you owe Romano?" He asked as he checked her vitals.  
  
"I made him go get me good food, not the crap they serve here." He moved to the foot of the bed to check on her burns, and laughed a bit.  
  
"You actually got the heartless one to do something you wanted to?"  
  
"The trick is proving yourself better than him. As long as he thinks he's better than you, he doesn't care what you think."  
  
"What are you, a psychiatrist?"  
  
"Was. Tried it for a year, found out I was crazier than most of my patients and stopped." She made it sound like a joke, but she knew that it was true. He chuckled at that, before he stepped back.  
  
"Well, you look like you're in good shape, I'll have you start on physical therapy tomorrow. You're going to have to start small though, you do realize that?"  
  
"Yes dedja." He laughed at the use of the other language.  
  
"Dedja? Shouldn't that be mother?"  
  
"No, my deja was the one who was always the one who did all that 'be careful' shit. Not mum." He laughed.  
  
"well then, at least it's a change of scenery so that you don't wind up with cabin fever."  
  
"I already have gotten it. If I could walk, I'd probably be reenacting the Shining right now." He had to give her the fact that her sarcasm could be funny, when she wasn't directing it directly at him.  
  
"Anything you need?"  
  
"Baldy's getting the only things."  
  
"I'll be back in an hour then." She nodded, at let him walk out, watching the way his muscles moved under the white lab coat as he gracefully left. 


	5. 5

Twenty minutes later, another figure stood in her doorway, this one with a bag crinkling noisily on his arm. She grinned at him as he tossed the bag on the bed next to her, before he fished out a bag of plain potato chips for himself. She offered the bottle of soda to him, and he shook his head, before she opened the top and took a swig straight out of the large bottle. "Do you always do that?" he asked her, as he collapsed on the chair next to the bed.  
  
"Only when I don't have to be civilized." He laughed, and she tore into her bag of Doritos. She looked at him for a minute. "What happened to your arm?" He flexed the prothestic that he had, and looked at her for a long minute. She saw the look on his face, and blanched. "I'm sorry, you don't have to tell me." He shrugged a slight bit.  
  
"A word of advice, don't bend down in front of a helicopter."  
  
"Advice taken. And don't try to put on makeup while flying a plane. Especially not through turbulence."  
  
"Is that what happened to you?" She nodded. "I was so busy trying to make myself look good that I came thisclose," she gestured with her thumb and forefinger, "to killing myself. Why were you bending over in front of one of those horrible, bouncing things?"  
  
"Picking up a patient's chart that dropped." She nodded. "At least you're still a doctor." The look on his face told her she shouldn't of said that. "At least you have a steady job."  
  
"In this hellhole."  
  
"How long have you been a doc?"  
  
"Almost twenty years."  
  
"And you still think of this place as a hellhole."  
  
"I used to be a surgeon."  
  
"Oh, Mr. high and mighty I take it. No wonder you hate it down here, you're used to people already shut up and cleaned up." He laughed at how true the statement was.  
  
"I don't like it when my patients can talk. Especially when they can smart mouth me."  
  
"Ah, but it's so much more fun." He glared at her.  
  
"You speak Hungarian?"  
  
"Well,, not fluently, but enough to get by."  
  
"What else can you say?"  
  
"Buzmeg." She said, as Luka waltzed in. He laughed, and glared at her.  
  
"Was that directed at me, or him?" she thought for a moment, before gesturing with her head towards Romano.  
  
"Him." they shared a laugh, follwed by another at the short doctor's puzzled look.  
  
"Do I want to know what that means?" Romano asked, and she looked at him.  
  
"Probably not." The older doctor looked at Luka to see if he would tell him the meaning of the word.  
  
"Should I tell him?" She shrugged.  
  
"Go ahed, this should be classic."  
  
"Well, what does it mean?" Romano asked again, impatiently waiting for the meaning of the word. Selma offered Luka the soda, and he took a small sip out of the bottle, the same way she drank from it. Luka purposely paused as long as possible to irritate the already irate doctor, before grinning.  
  
"To put it eloquently, it means 'F-you'" Both Luka and Selma laughed at their own little joke, and Romano simply looked annoyed, before he smiled slightly.  
  
"How do you say it, buzzmeck?"  
  
"Meg, buzmeg."  
  
"Must remember that. Always useful to insult people in languages that they don't understand."  
  
"It is, isn't it." She yawned openly. She hadn't gotten any real sleep since before she came into the ER, the most she had was the drug induced haze, which didn't account for much.  
  
"Tired?" Luka asked her as he checked the burn on her leg.  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"Well then, get some sleep, I got you a slot for physical therapy tomorrow." She nodded, and leaned back in the bed, allowing sleep to wash over her, as the two doctors that were in her room left her in peace. 


	6. 6

She woke up the next morning full of energy, ready to start the path that would get her out of the place that she hated. She hated hospitals, they had too many bad memories for her. she had spent altogether too much time in them, she had seen the inside of them for far too long. The smell made her nauseaus, even though she had already been in the hospital for three days. She hated the sights of them, hated the overbearing nurses, and although she could even say she'd befriended two of them, she hated the doctors.  
  
She had to give them credit though. Kovac really did know what he was doing, and he was good at it. He was nice, although he acted like a idiot from time to time, he was a good guy. And he wasn't too bad looking either. He was what she needed in life, he was stability, he was nice, and he was out of her league. He would never want her, she was only his patient, he was her doctor, that was it, that was their only connection. They had no hope, they had no chance of any form of a relationship.  
  
Hell, she had more of a chance with Romano than she did with Kovac, And she didn't even really like him. he was fun to trade snarky, sarcastic comments with, but he wasn't a nice guy. And from what she could tell, he was nice to her. If he called that being nice, she hated to see him evil. But he was a fun sparring partner, and he was someone to talk to, which was what she needed most. Already her attention span had worn out, and already, she wanted to be out of there.  
  
A nurse walked in with one of those obviously faked smiles that they always wore, pushing a wheelchair in front of her. "I'm here to take you up to PT." Selma smiled at her.  
  
"Finally, I get to get up and walk."  
  
The nurse nodded, and helped her into the waiting chair. She guided the chair through the halls of the hospital, stopping at the PT room. The physical therapist looked at her, and aided her out of the wheelchair, into another chair in the room. "I'm doctor Marbury, and I'll be in charge of your physical therapy." Selma nodded at the other woman. "Now let me get this right, you've burned both of your legs, dislocated a leg, and broke a leg, right?"  
  
"Don't remember dislocating it, but I probably did."  
  
"Well, you're in for a long and painful road."  
  
"How long is this going to take?" The physical therapist gave her a long hard look.  
  
"Probably at least a month before you can go home."  
  
"That's what they all say."  
  
"Because that's what your injuries are like."  
  
"great." The physical therapist went to try and help her out of the chair, only to have her creak up painfully. "That smarts."  
  
"It will." Selma rolled her eyes, but tried to hobble over to the treadmill that Dr. Marbury was guiding her to. "Step up on the treadmill." Selma complied, however grudgingly.  
  
"What do I have to do to get out of here?" The doctor thought for a moment.  
  
"Be able to walk for five minutes, and climb a flight of stairs."  
  
"That's easy."  
  
"That's what you think." The treadmill whirred on, and she tried to walk, finding it extremely hard and painful.  
  
"Maybe you were right." Selma panted as she allowed the doctor to help her off the treadmill.  
  
"We're just going to take it slow, I think that's good enough for today." Selma nodded as she collapsed into the wheelchair, allowing herself to be wheeled back to her room to fall asleep from the small excursion, amazed at how hard it really was. 


	7. 7

She heard a knock on the door, and emerged from her state of half conciousness. "Yeah, what d'ya want?" She shouted through the door. The person on the other end took that for a 'come in' and walked through the door, pushing his way through using his shoulder, his hands full with a brown paper bag, and one of those drink caddies that held two sodas in it. "Please say one of those is for me."  
  
"No, I'm thirsty."  
  
"It go over and kick your ass but I'm kinda weak here. Give it to me out of sympathy."  
  
"I don't feel sympathy for anyone."  
  
"It's crap anyway."  
  
"How come you wanted it?"  
  
"Soda and burger king, good crap." She laughed at her own joke, and he smiled a bit. "I'm in pain here, gimme."  
  
"You have a morphine drip."  
  
"It doesn't do much for hunger"  
  
"Do you really want this?" She could see the light glimmer in his eyes, he was playing with her, toying with her.  
  
"Hell yeah."  
  
"Well this crap is all mine." There was a smirk on his face, and she glared at him.  
  
"You're evil."  
  
"Thank you."  
  
"Why do you hate it down here so much?"  
  
"It's different from surgery."  
  
"Stick to what you know?"  
  
"Yeah, I guess you could say that."  
  
"At least you're still a doctor."  
  
"Like it's much of a difference, I can't do much."  
  
"But you can still preface your name with Doctor, and end it with MD. Some people don't get that."  
  
"Some people do, those of us that work hard."  
  
"And then there are those that work hard, pour their life into their craft, only to have one mistake screw everything up."  
  
"Or one accident."  
  
"No, not an accident, accident's can be explained, accidents can be written off, mistakes can't."  
  
"What's the difference?"  
  
"An accident is not your fault, you can't help an accident, you can stop a mistake. It's why you're still here, why you still have an MD. And you know you like it, it's why you devoted your life to this, you knew that this was what you wanted to do for the longest time, You made this your living for a reason, you love it, and as much as you act like you hate it, as much as you act like you hate all people, you really love humanity. Otherwise, you wouldn't be in here, toying with me, you wouldn't stop in to see me every day, just because you were there when I was wheeled in, otherwise you wouldn't stop in every patient's room, checking up on them. It's not part of your job description, you like people. You want to do something for society, as much as you act like society owes you something, you feel like you owe something to society, hence this. You don't care where you are, or what you're doing, you still have your job, and you're still a doctor, even though you had an accident." Her voice was quiet and calm, but at the same time there was a repressed anger to it.  
  
"What are you, a shrink?"  
  
"Was, it's amazing how a mistake can screw things up."  
  
"What happened?"  
  
"You going to give some of that crap?"  
  
"You going to tell me what happened?"  
  
"Give me the food first." He reluctantly handed her one of the two burgers in the bag over. "And some fries, and a soda." He handed them over to, and set them down on the tray that rested over her bed. She unwrapped the burger, and took a large bite into it. "Thank you. Now leave."  
  
"I thought you were going to spin me a tale."  
  
"Do I look like a bard to you?"  
  
"Then I'm taking all of that back." He said reaching for the fries on the tray. She grabbed his hand before he could reach them though, and pushed it back towards him.  
  
"No, no you don't. Fine, I'll tell you what happened, but quid pro quo pal." He nodded, as she took another bite of her burger. "It's a long story."  
  
"I've got all day. Not like I like this hellhole."  
  
"There you go again with the act. Just admit that you like this job. Or I'm not telling you what happened."  
  
"I don't mind this as much as I act like it."  
  
"Now, can we get that Weaver chick, Luka, and oh, the entire staff of the ER in here to hear you say that."  
  
"I'm not stooping that low."  
  
"That's what you think."  
  
"If I have to resort to that, I'd rather not know what happened."  
  
"Oh, you're an asshole, I plan on publicly humiliating you in front of your colleagues at least once before I leave."  
  
"I can make your stay miserable, you do realize that?"  
  
"Yes, I do, but It'll all be worth it to see you squirm."  
  
"You can't make me squirm."  
  
"I'll be the judge of that. Now out." She reached for the button on the morphine pump next to her as she finished off the last French fry on her tray.  
  
"What happened to the story?"  
  
"I'll tell it later."  
  
"That's not fair."  
  
"Nor are you." He glared at her. "Out, unless you want to sit here while I sleep. Warning, I snore."  
  
"In which case I'll leave." She laughed having gotten in the last word, as he turned around and walked out of the door. "You owe me." She grinned at him as he walked out, and she settled back in to a painful sleep, having not pushed the button on the pump, afraid of what the drugs would do to her. 


End file.
